School is out this week.  Its a new thing here in Florida…. you get the whole week of Thanksgiving off.  Of course, if you are a working mom I’m not real sure what they think you are supposed to do with your kids….I guess they just assume you’ll take the whole week off too?  Then there are the work from home/stay at home moms like me who think they may just gouge their eyes out if school is out for a whole week. 

Anna Grace’s preschool follows the school district calendar so there’s no school for her either.  This has turned out better than I thought it would.  We’ve tinkered around and she hasn’t complained much (she loves school). Her speech therapist is also shut down this week so… our schedule is freefreefree.  (This initially caused me a great deal of panic but it has gone better than expected.)

The kids here in the apartment complex (Casa de Cheapo) are also freefreefree and their boredom was starting to show as early as noon on Monday.  Well, boredom peaked yesterday afternoon when there was a knock on the door.  A little boy stood there (he was maybe 6…. or a very small 7).  He smiled real cute and  informed me that he, along with his brother and his cousin, had been working on a project and if I paid him 2 dollars I could look at it.  If I paid him 5 dollars I could keep it.

I smiled and said I was working and maybe I’d stop by later. (There is this cosmic thing that happens in the world each day between 3:30 and 3:45.  All the powers that be know I’m racing around to get the post office before it closes… boxing up yarn etc.  It is at this exact moment each day that the phone starts ringing, the internet goes down and little boys knock on my door trying to politely scam me out of 5 bucks!)

Anyway….

I finish packing boxes and headed off to the post office.  I get back home and I see a ruckus going on.  Ya see… from where the parking lot is I walk along this little sidewalk, past one building, round the corner and to my humble little abode.  Along this route I pass an apartment that always has the prettiest little decor outside.  Nothing fancy but just the perfect amount of color, etc. 

Lately this apartment’s decor has been the prettiest pointsettias just outside the door.  The leaves are this dark, vibrant scarlett.  Well, this is where the ruckus is.  Little boy, his brother and his cousin are getting a firm chewin’ out in Caribbean spanglish with all sorts of hand motions, stomping around, shaking of fingers, etc.  It seems the lady that lives in that apartment discovered that the "project" with the high viewing price was actually all the leaves off of her pointsettias (that had been unceremoniously removed from their stems) glued onto a piece of cardboard.

I got a big kick out of the whole scene.  Especially seeing that the lady who had just had her pointsettias destroyed must’ve actually thought it was kinda funny.  While chewing them out I noticed the slightest bit of a smile.  Seems she was having a hard time keeping a straight face but felt it was important to nip this little crime wave in the bud (no pun intended).  At least she could see the humor in the situation.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood
The Poinsettias are naked and I feel good
Would you be mine…. could you be mine… won’t you be
My neighbor